Tuesday, August 26, 2008

"Egg Price" logic - How to reduce petrol price

A very interesting article about Disrupting the Supply CHain in an effort to reduce petrol price. I've seen another one that says don't buy petrol from the two largest oil producers in the world for a few days.
If everyone does it, the impact would be quite drastic I can imagine. =)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he
> goes to the
> grocery store he pays 60 cents a dozen.Since a dozen eggs
> won't last a week
> he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying
> eggs he notices
> that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys
> groceries, eggs
> are 76 cents a dozen.
>
> When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner
> says, "The price
> has
> gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly" .
> This store buys 100
> dozen
> eggs a day He checked around for a better price and all the
> distributors
> have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to
> buy from the huge
> egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of
> business. The huge
> egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors.
> With no
> competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The
> distributors then
> have to raise their prices to t he grocery stores. And on
> and on and on.
>
> As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw
> the big egg
> trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed
> there. He
> checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling
> 100,000 dozen
> eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the
> price of eggs.
>
>
> Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to
> $1.00 a dozen.
> Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told,
> "Cakes and baking for
> the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be
> a lot of baking
> going
> on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs
> goes up. Expect the
> same thing at Christmas and other times when family
> cooking, baking, etc.
> happen.
>
> This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a
> dozen. The man
> says, " There must be something we can do about the
> price of eggs".
>
> He starts talking to all the people in his town and they
> decide to stop
> buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed
> eggs.
>
> Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He
> ate 2 eggs a day.
> On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and
> buy two eggs.
> Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.
>
> The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too
> many eggs in his
> cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any
> eggs Maybe
> wouldn't need any all week.
>
> The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He
> told the huge egg
> farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not
> need any for at least
> two weeks.
>
> At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs. To
> relieve the
> pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they
> could buy the
> eggs at a lower price.
>
> The distributor said, " I don't have the room for
> the %$&^*&%
> eggs even if
> they were free". T he distributor told the grocery
> store owner that he
> would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start
> buying again.
>
> The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room
> for more eggs. The
> customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now if you
> were to drop
> the price of eggs back down to the original price, the
> customers would start
> buying by the dozen again".
>
> The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers
> but the egg
> farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs
> but, those chickens
> just kept on laying Fin ally, the egg farmers lowered the
> price of their
> eggs.
>
> But only a few cents.
>
> The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They
> said, "when the
> price
> of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start
> buying by the
> dozen."
>
> Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors
> had to slash
> their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg
> farmers.
>
> The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors
> wouldn't buy at a
> higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they
> had full
> warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while.
>
> And those chickens kept on laying.
>
> Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they
> were throwing away
> eggs they couldn't sell.
>
> The distributors started buying again because the eggs were
> priced to where
> the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.
>
> And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.
>
> Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.
>
> What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time
> they pulled to
> the pump? The dealer's tanks would stay semi full all
> the time. The
> dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the
> huge tank farms. The
> tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from
> the refining plants.
> And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil
> being off loaded
> from
> the huge tankers coming from the oil fiends.
>
> Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up.
> You may have to stop
> for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.
>
> Think about it.
>
> As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas that
> leaves my tank a
> little under quarter full. The way prices are jumping
> around, you can buy
> gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be
> $2.15. If you
> have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room
> for the $2.15 gas.
>
> You might not understand the economics of only buying two
> eggs at a time
> but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of
> the high priced
> stuff.
>
> Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station;
> don't give them any
> more
> of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until
> the prices come
> down..."
>
> just think of this concept for a while.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unless the price of the fertilizer/corn to feed the chicken is not affected by inflation, therefore they wont be any neccesary
price increment. Now that, and the cost of labor, utility bill, water bill, transportation from the farm to the kedai runcit, it all requires money. Think for a second if you were the managing director, would you like to just break even?. Or better just dont do business at all. That way less headache and life would be so less stressfull.
just my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Good point there looking at it from the business owners point of view. Lots of people suffer throughout the entire supply chain as a result of these speculation/manipulation of comodities as a result of greedy individuals(s).

If I had a magic wand, I'll wave it and make the price of energy free.

Anonymous said...

the only problem i see with buying a low quantity of fuel is that daytime heat would cause our petrol tank to expand slightly, and more fuel to vaporise to fill up all that empty space until the air is fully condensed. when you drive you use up the fuel resulting in more space in the tank, resulting in more vaporisation. and when you open your tank to refill the vapor jets out (that pshhhhh sound) so you are actually wasting fuel, resulting in buying more fuel collectively in the same timespan.

well, this is my theory only of course, thats why i prefer to fill up more when possible hehe.

then again, your method would probably require only a week or two to take effect right? now if only we can get everyone to do this together =P